"Well, you've walked over mine many a time, Miss Queen Elizabeth, and you haven't decorated me yet, nor made me an earl nor anything else for it, and I'm not going to forgive you either," and he rose to his feet. "Look! Madge, look!" he cried, and sprang out into the path, pointing to the sunshine bursting through the trees--the storm had passed as suddenly as it had come. "Isn't it glorious! Come here quick! Don't wait a minute. I should try to get that with Naples yellow and a little chrome--what do you think?" he asked when she stood beside him, half closing his eyes, to get the effect the better. Margaret looked at him curiously for a moment. She did not answer. "I cannot fasten his mind on anything in which I am interested," she said to herself, with a sigh, "nor shall I ever overcome these prejudices which seem to be part of his very life." She paused a moment and an expression of pain passed over her face. "Pale cadmium would be better," she said, quietly, with a touch of indifference in her tone, and led the way out of the forest to the main road. CHAPTER XV MRS. TAFT'S FRONT PORCH The autumn fires were being kindled on the mountains--fires of maple, oak, and birch. Along the leaf-strewn roads the sumach blazed scarlet, and over the rude stone fences blood-red lines of fire followed the trend of leaf and vine. Golden pumpkins lay in the furrows of the corn; showers of apples carpeted the grass of the orchards; the crows in straight lines, and the busy squirrels worked from dawn till dark. Over all settled the requiem haze of the dead summer, blurring the Notch and softening Moose Hillock to a film of gray against the pale sky. It had been a summer of very great sweetness and charm--the happiest of Oliver's life. He had found that he could do fairly well the things that he liked to do best; that the technical difficulties that had confronted him when he began to paint were being surmounted as the weeks went by, and that the thing that had always been a pain to him had now become a pleasure--pain, because, try as he might, the quality of the result was always below his hopes; a pleasure, because some bit of bark, perhaps, or glint of light on moss-covered rock, or tender vista had at last stood out on his canvas with every tone of color true. Only a painter can understand what all this meant to Oliver; only an out-of-door painter, really. The "studio-man" who reproduces an old study which years before has inspired him, or who evolves a composition from his inner consciousness, has no such thrills over his work. He may, perhaps, have other sensations, but they will lack the spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm over the old sketch. And how glorious are the memories!